The Forest of Bones
by afriendtosell
Summary: Orochimaru let out a sigh, reaching inside of his yukata and placing two flat pieces of gold on each of Kimimaro's eyelids, the action strangely reverent for one who valued gold as much as some valued lint. [Soundfic. DARK]


-- Let's pretend that parts 1 and 3 happened a a few weeks after Orochimaru's first body-switch and that part 2 is timeless.

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**Part** 1: _The Forest of Bone and Sound_

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Much like the thousands of bones that jutted up from earth around them, the coarse grains of sand stuck in almost every possible corner of Kabuto's mouth were made that much more annoyingly rough and out-of-place simply because he c_ould not leave them be_.

"Orochimaru-sama," the medic-nin began, spitting out the dust that had gathered in his mouth; his tongue tasting something...bittersweetly _metallic_ as he did so, as if someone had shred iron into the earth before they had done...whatever had gone on here. "--Searching for the child's body would be far easier if we took a higher road. Why not summon--"

"Be silent, Kabuto," the Snake Sennin replied, clambering over a fallen tree without as much effort as Kabuto thought his new body would need, still moving forward through the bony undergrowth despite how it threatened to tear them both apart. "I haven't the patience to deal with the serpents today -- of all people, _you_ should know that," Orochimaru continued, tossing Kabuto a significant, almost..._expectant _look as he turned to the right, his eyes catching the sun for a moment and glistening like a pair of open wounds.

"Why don't you try to enjoy this place? -- _I am_, after all."

The Medic-nin nodded once to Orochimaru's back, fully understanding the threat for what it was. There was still sand in his mouth; still something vaguely...(_sanguine_? _metallic_? **coppery**? -- _Yes_; _getting closer_)...bittersweet on the edge of his tongue, and as they made their way through the shadows cast by the bone-trees -- passing by spinal disks that sprung up from the ground like the teeth of a long-deceased leviathan; punching into the sky, solemn and hungry -- Kabuto let any and all hope for making this search-and-destroy mission any easier fall by the wayside.

(_...By calculating the density of the bones and how much chakra was displaced...No, no, of course this was the last thing he did -- think harder._ _Kimimaro_ _could have easily taken Uzumaki out with the training regimen he placed himself through -- who interfered and saved the blonde's life_?)

"Stop dawdling, Kabuto."

Great. Orochimaru was in one of his..._moods_, again, which meant that Kabuto had no other choice but to keep desperately searching for any one sign; for any one hint of what had transpired here to make Kimimaro have to resort to using..._that_ technique.

_(How did Kimimaro die, aside from the obvious? His training regimen would have...No; __**No**__, Kabuto, look underneath the underneath; spin the color wheel until all the hues and pigments match up in the picture that you need to see. Orochimaru doesn't exist, now. Forget him and __**think**__ about what he wants to hear -- he'll be expecting an answer soon._)

When Orochimaru held up his hand to signal a pause in their march, the pair found themselves in a...decidedly strange place.

(..._This is where it happened_.)

At first glance, the clearing seemed wholly artificial -- the broken bones reaching into the sky as if one angry god had crushed another, and crushed him completely without mercy -- and yet, though no animals made sound and no life seemed to inhabit anything around them, it seemed...utterly natural for the forest to be this way; for the silence to be broken only by the wind blowing through the hollow, empty spaces of the bone-trees, a sound no human lip could produce filling and cutting through the air like a funeral dirge, haunting and uplifting all at the same time.

It was in this instance, his eyes glancing over the splintered bones contrasting vividly against the earth that still hung in the air, that still crept into his mouth and his eyes like a swarm of insects, that Kabuto knew that Orochimaru was right.

He would never again get to enjoy something like this, now that its creator was dead.

"...It's a shame, isn't it, Orochimaru-sama?," the Medic-nin murmured to himself, running his hand across the fractured bark of one of the nearby trees as he unwittingly vocalized his thoughts. "The best and worst of our Village hated Kimimaro because the Kaguya's gift allowed him to hide the monster that he was, and yet...It is the exact opposite of how he lived that we are admiring in his death."

(_And what an worthless death it was_, he wants to say, but--) The Snake Sennin whirled on his right-hand faster than Kabuto would allow himself to let the other man know he could move, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and hoisting him off the ground with little effort; his eyes burning into Kabuto's face like frozen amber cast in iron, searing through and into him, making the medic feel nakeder than an open body on an operating table.

"...His body is in the next clearing," the Serpent whispers, his breath hot and sweet against Kabuto's face, "I want you to get down on your knees and beg it for forgiveness, Kabuto -- do I make myself crystalline?"

Weak and powerless as he was -- here and there, he was bleeding from a dozen cuts and covered in scratch marks, resembling more mongrel dog than majestic serpent-king -- Orochimaru still made for an imposing figure. And while it was true that the both of them knew that the Snake-Sennin had very little leverage left over his right-hand, Kabuto had had no intention of showing the extent or hint of any betrayal just yet. (_It was simply still too soon to press his advantage; always too soon to press the advantage, with Orochimaru's eyes boring into him like he could read his soul_--)

"I...," Kabuto began, his eyes turning down and to the left for only a moment as he submitted to Orochimaru's will. "...Yes, Orochimaru-sama, I..._forgivemeformyimpudence_."

(_No; no, he tells himself: The feel of the Kusunagi, so sharp and...__**hungry**__ as it pressed into his gut has nothing to do with the quickness of his answer_ -- _has nothing to do with his fear. __**It's all in the eyes**_)

"We both know I will not -- Go, Kabuto.

-- His hands clenched into fists, Orochimaru's right-hand did what his master bade him to do, and felt that now, more than ever, the entire world was laughing at him.

(_I'm the only male medic-nin in all the Sound, and still, I get no perks_.)

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**Part** 2: _Eaters of the Dead_

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There were pictures of who the corpse once was hanging above the operating table, each one a different head-shot or profile picture when taken out of context: a picture of the man laughing, here, his eyes shining in the dull light of the bar, and, there, a picture of him looking into the sunset, his hair tied up in a simplistic knot and those very same eyes solemn and grave, his face matted with dirt and his katana covered with drying blood -- the two different sides of his life, and, perhaps, Daisuke's own life given shape and a time-frame that stopped, abruptly, when the genin's own two eyes hit the table.

His body already as cold as the steel he lay on, the man's hair was down, loose around his shoulders and matted with blood. Daisuke didn't know the man's name, but realized that it didn't matter whether or not he did -- the man didn't exist anymore, in the Sound; his katana most likely already melted down and reforged for someone else while his clothing, just like everything else he had owned that would serve no physical purpose anymore, had have to have been redistributed amongst the newer recruits.

(_Where did the life go? When did he stop living, exactly?, he asks himself, feeling...strangely out-of-place in his own mind. He's tried to stop what he's doing; tried to force himself to quit questioning everything like his sensei wants him to, but_...)

"...How did he die?" the young medic asked, watching Kabuto begin to make a **V**-shaped incision at both of the man's collar-bones, the chakra-scalpel in Kabuto's hands cutting down to the top of his breastbone and then to the corpse's pubis, turning the **V** into a **Y** and opening up the man's chest like a clam left out for too long in the sun; his rib-cage splitting straight down the middle with a noiseless sigh.

"Poor choice of sexual partners," Orochimaru answered for his right-hand, his eyes twinkling with mirth. "--It isn't always fatal, but this time our poor child forgot to do a background check on where he felt like inserting himself."

When the smell of the body finally hit Daisuke full-on, his mouth was open, and he tasted something dark and..._wet --_ the scent of the man's entrails reminding him of something rotten but _sweet_ at the same time, as if the man's body were filled with over-riped fruit that had burst in the sun. "Tch," he began, holding his nose and realizing that, though it wasn't entirely _unpleasant_, if he wanted to keep his nerves around his teacher's he'd have to stop pretending that he _liked_ it in any way, shape, or form. "...Orochimaru-sama, how can be something fatal?"

Kabuto tensed at the operating table, and, almost physically, Daisuke could feel the air turn to ice; could already feel the muscles in his throat begin to constrict as his mouth ran dry and his tongue went numb, a feeling like someone stuffing him with cotton overcoming his senses. "--Most of the time, it isn't," Orochimaru explained, still smirking in a way that frightened Daisuke to his very core, and then, turning to Kabuto, he gestured to the body and began: "Please continue, Kabuto-kun -- we have do places to be after this."

The bile that ran up Daisuke's throat as Orochimaru looked away from him threatened to spill out as, without another word, Kabuto nodded once and began to tie up the body's intestines -- taking foot after foot of the glistening, serpent-like things (that looked so much like a ball of mating snakes, Daisuke thought, and then reprimanded himself -- snakes were cleaner than that) and tying them deep inside of the man's pelvis, describing them as "normal" before he continued to analyze the rest of the body in the same manner and in the most unaffected voice the Genin has ever heard.

The entire process took less than a minute, and in the end, the man resembled more..._meat_ than any sort of human corpse than Daisuke had ever seen.

"Though the subject died of a cranial hemorrhage..." Kabuto began, the microphone above his head swaying gently as he began to remove the rest of the man's major internals, weighing them and then cutting a small portion out of each of them before placing each one in one of the formaldehyde jars next to him; describing, in detail, what he saw; what he uncovered throughout the procedure, "...Ergo, I must conclude that the cause of death, as originally stated by the medic-nin who diagnosed him, is flawed. The girl he had had relations with did not murder her partner -- she was simply the carrier of the disease that, eventually, claimed his life."

Stepping off of the button that lowered the microphone, Kabuto turned to Daisuke and inclined his head to the formaldehyde jars. "After we are finished here, take those into the storeroom and file them appropriately, Daisuke-kun." The genin nodded, and, not quite knowing what else there was left to do once Kabuto turned his attentions back to the body, began to do as he was told -- picking up the first large jar and starting to make his way towards the door that the storeroom lay behind.

"Wait, child," Orochimaru interrupted, motioning for Daisuke to come back. "Your sensei said to do that when we are done, not **before**."

The genin arched an eyebrow, stifling the question that bubbled up past the vomit in his throat. Orochimaru elaborated no further and turned back to face Kabuto, leaning forward to apparently get a better look at whatever his sensei had been doing for the past minute or so, which made the genin blanch. Daisuke knew enough about what happened at the end of an autopsy to guess at what could possibly be so interesting about a dead body, and, quite frankly, knowing that the two men who struck fear into the heart's of so many of his peers were entertained by something so..._base_ made him think that much less of the both of them.

"Daisuke, _come_."

Bored and intrigued at the same time -- and not wanting in the least to bother Orochimaru twice in the same night -- Daisuke placed the jar in his hands down onto the floor and, leaning in to get a closer look at what they were doing once he reached them both, the genin screamed, a sense of vertigo overtaking him until he felt up become down and his skull meet the floor with a rather harsh _crack_ sound..

"Daisuke?"

The last thing he saw, before the darkness overtook him, was Orochimaru kneeling beside him, his head tilted to the side and his lips turned up in a smile as he masticated on something thick and brown that had stained his lips bloody, bloody **red**.

"_Are you alright, Daisuke-kun_?"

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**Part** 3: _Reap what you Sow_

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Side by side, they sat by the body of their fallen comrade -- Orochimaru cradling Kimimaro's head in his lap, his hand gently stroking the side of his face as Kabuto began to sow the teenager's body back up; his hands deftly threading the thick needle he had brought with him through the flesh, turning the cadaver from a piece of ruined meat into something whole, something human, with a soul and heart and a purpose, again.

"I did my best, Orochimaru-sama," Kabuto began, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand and smearing a good deal of blood through his hair, giving him a manic, frenzied look despite how calm he was, "However...Konohagakure's medic-nin got to him before I did -- there are some of our secrets left; but, everything else they stripped clean." Kabuto paused, tapping the edge of his chin for a moment, as if deep in thought. "--Even if they hadn't touched him, though, everything but his Cursed Seal was barely salvageable, as is. His clan's ninjutsu are so hard-coded into his DNA that I doubt the medic-nin that did this would have even though of making a map of it before they moved on."

"Don't bother telling me things I already know, Kabuto," Orochimaru murmured, still cradling Kimimaro's head in his lap and running his long, femininely-delicate fingers through Kimimaro's ivory tresses; front to back and then again, never pausing, touching his face -- once so full and oddly beautiful; now...empty -- as if he were trying to map it with his fingertips.

Kabuto tilted his head at the sight, more...interested with what he was seeing than anything else; placing a slight stutter in his speech so that his surprise filtered through his normally cold mien. "I-i'm sorry for wasting your time, Orochimaru-sama?"

The Snake Sennin said nothing, his eyes boring into Kimimaro's face; his thumbs encircling the marks tattooed on his forehead. All around them both, the bone forest was beginning to recede back into the earth; bones to dust and dust back to the earth, as was the way of things "...Do you know what these markings mean?" Orochimaru asked, oblique as ever; catching Kabuto off-guard with his sudden openness. "He told me, once...Before he betrayed my trust."

The medic-nin shook his head "No", and with a gentle, slightly...psychotic smile, Orochimaru let out a sigh and continued: "In his clan, they believed that the human skull contained the soul, and that the human heart contained all of the evils that the Kami had bestowed on us in ages past. Both marks were a way of...filtering evil, he told me -- the circulatory system brought fractions of evil from the heart and into the mind, and right-most mark, named Mugen, would take them all in, analyzing and interpreting them so that the soul could know what it was, exactly, that the heart wanted. The right mark, named Douri, would, in turn, filter the most unnatural of these desires, obliterating and steadily ridding the body of the evils the Gods had given us."

Orochimaru paused, and then, with another sigh, took Kimimaro's hand and held it up for Kabuto to see. "The system, in myth, takes a lifetime to purify the body," he murmured, dropping the hand rather casually. "Kimimaro was fifteen -- how much evil do you think he still held inside of him, like a poison?"

Kabuto's eyes drifted down and to the left as he held back his natural reflex of wanting to scoff; opening his mouth for a moment and then closing it with a click. He simply couldn't help the next words that came out of his mouth: "Kimimaro's clan was a group of backwards idiots, Orochimaru-sama. You can't honestly believe that I would ever answer that question."

The Serpent looked down for a moment, a single fingertip tracing the edge of the stitching that cut through what was left of Kimimaro's Gaia Seal, tracing it. "Honestly, Kabuto-kun?" Orochimaru whispered, the dark black ink of the seal beginning to seep back into his skin, darkening it in a way that the sun never could. "I trusted the words of this whoreson and his clan as far as they revolved around my own -- hand me what we have taken of him so that we may get this over with."

There were very few logical paradoxes in his life that Kabuto felt he would never solve in this life of the next, and this, Orochimaru's constant atheism when it came to any belief that submitted to being made part of his own or eventually sublimed into whatever megalomania that kept him alive, was one of them. Kabuto knew, more than anything else in life, that his master did not believe in gods and goddesses; did not hold any single life more sacred than the last, so what, exactly, was _this_?

"...Only his heart?" Kabuto dared to ask, tilting his head to the side just enough to make the sun reflect off of his glasses."Or...?"

Orochimaru let out a sigh, reaching inside of his yukata and placing two flat pieces of gold on each of Kimimaro's eyelids, the action strangely reverent for one who valued gold as much as some valued lint. "...One of his kidneys and his liver, as well, Kabuto-kun."

The silver-haired medic nodded and handed Orochimaru what he had asked for, leaning back on the heels of his palms as the sun began to set and the dark-haired Sennin went about placing Kimimaro's vitals back on top his chest, using Kabuto's scalpel to then cut out a small piece of each of them, his shadow growing long and obscene in the sunset.

"...Orochimaru-sama?"

The Snake Sennin said nothing after he had finished, and, after slowly placing each piece he had cut out inside of his mouth, began to chew, slowly, making each bite last; savoring them in a way that seemed respectful: reverential and not obscene as the forest of bones around them began to sink back down into the ground that had seemingly birthed it, finally accepted and embraced like the prodigal son come home for first time in years.

"...Kabuto," Orochimaru murmured as he stood back up to his feet, not even sparing one last look to the body as he began to walk, "I believe that we have dawdled here long enough -- let us leave this place and return to Oto."

As he got back up to his feet, Kabuto nodded, once again, to Orochimaru's back. "...There is nothing left for us here, now," the Sennin continued, looking back when he was sure Kabuto was not watching him, his voice as low as a a gust of wind sweeping across and empty plain and the squawking of a murder of crows sounding far off in the distance, jubilant and hungry.

"--No. There is nothing left here for us, at all."

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- Fin

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_Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life._


End file.
